Gallows Pole
by paperbkryter
Summary: Dean reflects on his brushes with death and what it means to him. Post Crossroad Blues with spoilers.


Dean wasn't good with words, at least the ones that counted. Oh, there was always a smart-ass remark on the tip of his tongue, or some glib joke and shallow observation. Those kind of words he could handle. It was the important ones he found elusive, the ones that brought comfort, or simple understanding. Verbally he wasn't very wise. His more thoughtful observations he usually kept to himself. The words just weren't there to express them and he wasn't confident his thoughts could be considered wise or not, not without feedback. One had to give to receive. Dean wasn't that good at giving.

So when he woke up under the sickly blue light of a hospital ICU, and the doctor told him he was dying, he didn't really say much at all. Just...

"Oh."

He listened to the doctor's platitudes with casual disinterest. The speech was well rehearsed, given to all terminal patients. The sincerity in the doctor's voice didn't match the look in his eye.

"_I'm sorry, son."_

No he wasn't. He didn't care. Dean was just another hopeless case. Pronounce verdict, let fate handle the sentencing, move on to someone more salvageable. Someone else might have been angry but anger and every other emotion seemed to have been purged right out of Dean's body, following the path of the current that felled him. He was drained both physically and emotionally. A headache throbbed behind his eyes. His whole body ached. He searched himself for _something_ to feel and latched on to the one thing remaining.

Relief.

It was over.

The little knot of tension between his shoulder blades began to unravel itself. He'd carried its burden for over twenty years. It was as if his father had shoved more into his arms that horrible night than a crying baby and Dean had never been able to put it down.

Until now.

Nothing mattered anymore. He was sidelined, taken out of the game by forces beyond his control. It was no longer his worry. Sammy could take care of himself. John Winchester could certainly take care of himself, and he didn't need any help from Dean. If he had, he wouldn't have disappeared like he did. In any case, it was Sam who John valued most.

Dean didn't have a college education, he wasn't hip to current pop culture, but he wasn't stupid. Sam had escaped the life that had swallowed up his father. He'd made something of himself all on his own. John was alternately angry and proud. Dean bore witness to his father's pride, and bowed beneath the weight of John's anger. What was the term? Whipping boy? Sam had escaped, leaving Dean alone to deal with their father and their father's obsession. Sam got choices. He _made_ options. Dean didn't.

Death finally offered him an alternative. It was his ticket to freedom. Dean hadn't realized how badly he hungered for it until it arrived in the form of 100 thousand volts of electricity and a massive heart attack.

He didn't have the words to explain it, nor the heart to (no pun intended), especially when Sam lingered at the foot of his bed with tears in his eyes and a familiar, stubborn expression. Dean knew that look well - Sam was about to throw a tantrum. But instead of hurling himself to the floor kicking his heels, he would focus his energy elsewhere, frantically searching for a miracle. He didn't understand Dean's apathy and Dean couldn't tell him anything, couldn't make him understand. Sam went away hurt when Dean finally asked him to leave.

_I'm tired, Sammy. Please, just leave me alone._

It wasn't the Holy Spirit that drove Dean to his knees at Reverend LeGrange's altar, it was the shackles he felt tightening around his ankles and the mantle of responsibility settling once more upon his shoulders. The door to freedom slammed shut. Later he would learn the truth behind the miracle and the additional weight of guilt staggered him. Someone else had died to save his miserable, meaningless life.

The life he didn't want anymore.

* * *

Death didn't frighten him. He'd looked it in the eye once before and considered it a friend. It was his only escape, his only way to freedom. Here it was knocking on his door again. He just had to open it.

"_Dad, don't you let it kill me!" _

He wasn't afraid of dying. What frightened him was his father's helplessness. Dean's child-like belief in his father's infallibility had cracked beneath the onslaught of the demon's attack. The thought of John trapped inside his own body, unable to stop his enemy from killing his son, bothered Dean beyond fear. If John Winchester fell, they would all fall. Bereft of his guidance, their morale would shatter, and their defenses would crumble. The demon would prevail.

It wanted Sammy. John knew how to stop it. Dean didn't. Dean was as the demon suggested – utterly useless.

He spoke not to save his own life, but to draw out his father's strength, to force John to fight back.

"_Dad, please..."_

Dean had never seen nor heard of anyone battling back against demonic possession. Such resolve was awe inspiring. It took a phenomenal strength of will. He had never heard of anyone holding on to the demon inside them either, preventing its escape. John did both, and for a moment Dean saw God - in the guise of a middle-aged auto mechanic. He saw _good, _he saw _hope. _Their father had to live at all costs, to carry on the fight. Dean struggled to explain it to Sam. He _had_ to explain it to Sam.

He couldn't. Somewhere between mind and body there was a disconnection. His own strength had drained away with the blood pouring from his chest. He could only gasp out a rudimentary thought as John begged for Sam to shoot him, and Sam obediently raised the Colt to do so.

"_Sam, don't you do it! Don't you do it!"_

Dean didn't think Sam had heard him, nor did he believe Sam would listen. Sam wanted the demon dead. Would he sacrifice John to accomplish it? Seconds seemed like hours as they teetered on the brink of concluding a decades old quest for justice. The tension in the room was nearing the breaking point. John pleaded for Sam to end it. Dean begged for mercy on his father's behalf.

Sam listened to Dean, not John. He did not shoot. Dean lowered his head to the floor, sobbing in relief, choking on his own blood.

The demon had fled, ending the battle, but the war had just begun.

Sam's voice was stricken with fear. "Dean? Oh God..."

He had slipped beyond the boundaries of pain. Sam carried him to the car. Carried _him_. How was that for payback? It would have been humiliating had he the will to care. His head fell limply against Sam's shoulder. Among the last things he recalled were the scents of sweat and blood clinging to Sam's jacket, and the sound of Sam's rapidly beating heart. He heard Sam's rumbling voice but could not make out the words. Distantly he caught the familiar squeak of the Chevy's door opening.

He lost consciousness as his brother manhandled him into the car, and came to as the Impala pulled out onto the highway. Dean leaned heavily against the window, shivering, chilled to the bone. A part of his mind recognized the signs of shock. He was close to death, and was ready to embrace it.

Sam and John argued, their voices fading in and out like songs on a poorly tuned radio.

"_Disappointed in..."_

"_Killed...chance..."_

"_Everything..."_

"_Colt..."_

Out of the corner of his eye Dean saw the darkness part before twin suns. A blinding white light filled the inside of the car, and in the very next instant his burdens were lifted.

He stepped into the light.

"_It's over."_

His relief was precipitous. It wasn't over. He woke with the foul taste of bile in his throat and a lump the size of Alaska resting in his gut, but also very much alive. Sam never left his side, relating a fantastic story Dean only half believed. If he'd been as good as dead, what brought him back this time, and why?

Dean wasn't good with words, not like Sam, who always knew the right thing to say. Sam would have had no problem explaining what he was feeling inside, nor be hesitant to do so. Dean found it difficult.

"There's something wrong..."

It was fear, but not fear. He felt as if his mouth was stuffed with cotton, preventing him from saying what he needed Sam to know. The feeling of wrongness surrounded him like a shroud. It tightened when John came into the room. Panic followed when Sam was sent away on a pointless errand Dean recognized for what it was.

John spoke, spoke only to him, thrusting into his arms knowledge he knew he did not want to bear, and a responsibility he feared he could not carry. John Winchester's next to last act upon the Earth was this indoctrination. By the time Dean recovered from his shock, his father was dead.

There were no words at all then, only fear, only pain and guilt and anger, a lot of anger. He was angry at his father for dying. He was angry at himself for living. Peace eluded him. Once again he'd cheated death and this time the price had been much higher. Dean felt as if he'd been dropped into the middle of the ocean with no life jacket, and lead weights strapped to his ankles. The sharks were circling but they wouldn't attack, not yet, maybe never. It was sheer torture. Nerves stretched taut. Emotions ran high. Dean almost shattered beneath the strain.

Almost. If Sam hadn't taken his hand and pulled him from the edge...

It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened. A deal had been struck, a trade had been made. John died. Dean lived.

Life was overrated, especially his, but now he was bound to it. All because of his father's last whispered words, his father's sacrifice, and a vow he knew he could not break.

* * *

The she-demon at the crossroads tempted Dean with his father's life, describing the tortures John suffered, offering to bring him back in exchange for Dean's soul. It wasn't much of a bargain. He found his soul worth very little these days. There wasn't much difference between life on Earth and life in Hell, not so far as Dean could see. He'd given up hope of ever finding freedom. Death was a fickle bitch, always dancing just out of his grasp. He was already tortured.

She'd offered him his father's life, and ten years of his own with John and Sam at his side. They would be a family again. It was his greatest desire, she'd gotten that right, but she'd overestimated her own power. There was something else Dean would require for that scenario to come to pass. She hadn't known about it. Nobody did, besides Dean, John and the demon who haunted them. Only that demon had the power to make the deal Dean really needed, and it, no doubt, would refuse. The card it held was much more valuable than anything the Winchesters' had to offer.

Communication was definitely not Dean's strong point, nor was patience. He was learning though. The time would come for him to make his move, maybe sometime soon, but not now. He brushed aside temptation with a joke, walked away from desire with a sneer. The she-demon fled, and he collapsed into the car breathless, his burdens heavier, his pain sharper than ever.

Finding Sam and Evan alive and well brought him some relief. His efforts had not been in vain. Later Sam demanded to know what had happened at the crossroads, and much to his own surprise, Dean told him, in detail.

"You didn't really consider making that deal, right?" Sam asked.

There was a long pause before Dean reached down and turned the radio station. Rock music drowned out the need for an immediate response. Ultimately there would be no response. This time neither of them had the words, but Dean could feel Sam's fear and worry. It radiated out from him like heat from a fire.

He shuddered at the analogy.

Dean dreaded opening his eyes every morning, it was true, and every morning he wondered just how much more he could take. He told himself it was all part of following in his father's footsteps, and whether it was by choice or by destiny, that's the path he had taken. It was the only path. Such was his inheritance. Dean could only soldier on, putting aside his own desires for the sake of "duty."

It wasn't the need for revenge that drove him like it had John, nor the need to honor their father's memory that now kept Sam going. For Dean it was something else, a deep abiding affection he would _never_ be able to express in words. He was no longer living for himself, not at all.

He had a soul to save, and it wasn't his father's, which had been legitimately(selfishly)bartered away in exchange for his own, but one _stolen_ twenty-three years ago.

Dean tightened his hands around the steering wheel, hearing his father's voice as if John were sitting next to him. Grief wrapped itself around his throat and squeezed.

"_The demon, it's a thief, a dirty thief that robs innocent children of their souls. That night it put a claim on Sam. It owns him, Dean, and any day now it's gonna cash in its claim. That can't happen. Do you understand?"_

Self doubt made him falter. The loud music hid his voice from Sam.

"I can't...Dad..."

Dean's halo was tarnished, his resolve more than a little iffy - not to mention his sanity. It should be John here, not him. It was supposed to be John's task to save Sam from the demon, not Dean's. Dean's destiny lay six feet under. He'd just been along for the ride for as long as it lasted, and it should have been over months ago.

Maybe he should have taken the deal at the crossroads after all. She'd been able to say what he'd been thinking. His death would put everything right.

_Yes, Sammy. I did think about it, and you know it too._

Dean spared a glance at his brother's profile as Sam bent his head over a road map. He looked young, weary, and in the watery light of the flashlight he held, very vulnerable. The sight made Dean reflect upon a past filled with dirty diapers, bandaged knees, training wheels and prank wars. It made him fret about an uncertain future.

Mother, father, brother, savior. Damn, he needed overtime pay.

With a deep sigh, Dean rolled his shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness. For a long while he concentrated solely on driving until gradually he relaxed, and his fingers began tapping in time with the music. Ahead of them darkness was beginning to recede from the horizon. Dean gave the coming dawn a wry smile.

"Pancakes," he intoned. "I need pancakes."

"There's an IHOP in the next town," Sam muttered. "Twenty minutes, give or take."

"Awesome."

Dean shoved his foot down on the gas.

It was time to face another day.


End file.
